Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Today at work I heard someone somewhere in the building whistling Chopin – this nocturne that I loved when I was young. That's probably the best thing that's happened at work in the year and a half I've been here.

Check this out:

Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glimmer. Ghost-like we glide through nature, and should not know our place again.

Monday, June 5, 2006

I've started to collect these. Instances where I misunderstand someone, and what I thought they said was accidentally hilarious. It usually involves some form of chemical influence.

1. The first time it happened I was drugged up on cold medicine and really sick and was trying to get ready for work in the morning while listening to NPR and it they were speaking about something bad happening in the Congo and I thought she described the place as a "Peptocracy", as in Pep-Talk-Cracy, as in a tyranny of motivational speech.

2. I was seeing the band Loretta and the Larkspurs for the first time - at the Belmont - and I was there with my friend Tara and we both were liking it. The Belmont is a loud venue. Tara made an approving face, leaned over and it sounded like she said "They've got a lot of Smurf Appeal." I nodded. Yeah, I guess they do have a lot of smurf appeal. Loretta has a very whimsical, high voice. Very singsongy. Something smurfs would dig. What Tara actually said (which I learned later when I asked for her to elaborate on the larkspurs' Smurf Appeal) was "They've got Commercial Appeal."

3. This involves Julie, from the Larkspurs. A group of us were getting last call at Union Street. We'd all had enough to drink to be disoriented. Julie and had some kind of exchange and then she sighed, sat back, and said what sounded like "Cheesus." Now, I knew she meant to say "Jesus," but I had to ask. "Did you just say 'Cheesus'"? We all laughed. "Cheesus." The word hung in the air, waiting for the punchline. My mind was racing. I knew something was supposed to follow Cheesus. Next to me, Arun was staring down at the table, nodding, extremely drunk, like a drunk bandito in a spaghetti western. Without looking up he beat me to it: "Cheesus Crust."

4. At a fourth of july party yesterday, while fireworks were going off and it was hard to hear anything, even sober, I thought I heard someone say "Statue of Puberty." Statue of Puberty, indeed.